Digital Fascism

Media, Communication and Society Volume Four

Christian Fuchs

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2022
• ISBN:
  9781000532661
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Languages & Linguistics
• Subtopic: Communication Studies
• Index: Languages & Linguistics

This fourth volume in Christian Fuchs's Media, Communication and Society book series outlines the theoretical foundations of digital fascism and presents case studies of how fascism is communicated online.

Digital Fascism presents and engages with theoretical approaches and empirical studies that allow us to understand how fascism, right-wing authoritarianism, xenophobia, and nationalism are communicated on the Internet. The book builds on theoretical foundations from key theorists such as Theodor W. Adorno, Franz L. Neumann, Erich Fromm, Herbert Marcuse, Wilhelm Reich, Leo Löwenthal, Moishe Postone, Günther Anders, M. N. Roy, and Henry Giroux. The book draws on a range of case studies, including Nazi-celebrations of Hitler's birthday on Twitter, the 'red scare 2.0' directed against Jeremy Corbyn, and political communication online (Donald Trump, Boris Johnson, the Austrian presidential election). These case studies analyse right-wing communication online and on social media. Fuchs argues for the safeguarding of the democratic public sphere and that slowing down and decommodifying the logic of the media can advance and renew debate culture in the age of digital authoritarianism, fake news, echo chambers, and filter bubbles.

Each chapter focuses on a particular dimension of digital fascism or a critical theorist whose work helps us to illuminate how fascism and digital fascism work, making this book an essential reading for both undergraduate and postgraduate students of media and communication studies, sociology, politics, and political economy as well as anyone who wants to understand what digital fascism is and how it works.

Chapter One Introduction

1. 1.1 This Book's Chapters

DOI: 10.4324/9781003256090-1

This book asks: how is fascism communicated on the Internet? It outlines theoretical foundations of digital fascism and presents case studies that involve how fascism is communicated online.

The book at hand is the fourth volume of a series of books titled Media, Communication and Society. The overall aim of Media, Communication and Society is to outline foundations of a critical theory of communication and digital communication in society. It is a multi-volume book series situated on the intersection of communication theory, sociology, and philosophy. The overall questions that Media, Communication and Society deals with are: what is the role of communication in society? What is the role of communication in capitalism? What is the role of communication in digital capitalism?

Digital Fascism presents and engages with theoretical approaches and empirical studies that allow us to understand how fascism, right-wing authoritarianism, xenophobia, and nationalism are communicated on the Internet. The book engages with the theories of Theodor W. Adorno, Franz L. Neumann, Erich Fromm, Herbert Marcuse, Wilhelm Reich, Leo Löwenthal, Moishe Postone, Günther Anders, M. N. Roy, Henry Giroux, and Martin Heidegger. It presents analyses of how Nazis celebrate Hitler's birthday on Twitter, how user-generated ideology constructed a red scare 2.0 directed against Jeremy Corbyn, how right-wing authoritarianism utilised social media in the context of Donald Trump, Boris Johnson, and the Austrian presidential election, and how slowing down the logic of the media (“slow media”) can advance and renew debate culture in the age of digital authoritarianism, fake news, and filter bubbles.

The book is organised in the form of fifteen chapters, an introduction, and a conclusion. There are three parts. Part I (Foundations) engages with theoretical and philosophical aspects of fascism (Chapters 2–6). Part II (Applications) presents chapters based on critical theories of fascism and empirical analyses of how fascism and right-wing authoritarianism are communicated on the Internet and social media (Chapters 7-16). Part III is the conclusion that presents a concept of digital fascism.

The book follows the method that Marx called the advancement from the abstract to the concrete. In the Introduction to the Grundrisse, he described this method as follows:

Labour seems a quite simple category. The conception of labour in this general form – as labour as such – is also immeasurably old. Nevertheless, when it is economically conceived in this simplicity, ‘labour’ is as modern a category as are the relations which create this simple abstraction. […] As a rule, the most general abstractions arise only in the midst of the richest possible concrete development, where one thing appears as common to many, to all. […] The simplest abstraction, then, which modern economics places at the head of its discussions, and which expresses an immeasurably ancient relation valid in all forms of society, nevertheless achieves practical truth as an abstraction only as a category of the most modern society. […] The categories which express its [bourgeois society's] relations, the comprehension of its structure, thereby also allows insights into the structure and the relations of production of all the vanished social formations out of whose ruins and elements it built itself up, whose partly still unconquered remnants are carried along within it, whose mere nuances have developed explicit significance within it, etc. […] The bourgeois economy thus supplies the key to the ancient, etc. […] the latest form regards the previous ones as steps leading up to itself […]

The order obviously has to be (1) the general, abstract determinants which obtain in more or less all forms of society, but in the above-explained sense. (2) The categories which make up the inner structure of bourgeois society and on which the fundamental classes rest. Capital, wage labour, landed property. Their inter relation. Town and country. The three great social classes. Exchange between them. Circulation. Credit system (private). (3) Concentration of bourgeois society in the form of the state. Viewed in relation to itself. The ‘unproductive’ classes. Taxes. State debt. Public credit. The population. The colonies. Emigration. (4) The international relation of production. International division of labour. International exchange. Export and import. Rate of exchange. (5) The world market and crises. (Marx 1857/1858, 103–108)

In dialectical analyses of society, there is a dialectic of the abstract and the concrete. For understanding a concrete social phenomenon such as wage-labour or a society such as capitalist society, we need to understand what is common to all forms of work and all societies and how these general categories and the forms of them that existed in preceding epochs are sublated (aufgehoben) in the current social and societal forms.

If we want to understand how digital fascism works, we need to understand what fascism is in general and how it has worked historically. Our analyses and understandings of digital fascism should be based on and go beyond the analysis of historical examples.

Such insights should be the basis and inform our understandings of digital fascism. The analysis of digital fascism needs to preserve and at the same time go beyond its analytical basis. There are novel aspects in digital fascism that are expressions of general aspects of fascism and go beyond previous forms of fascism. The old and the more general aspects are sublated in the new and the more concrete aspects of the world. Hegel speaks in this context of Aufhebung, a term that is often translated from German into English as “sublation”, a term that means substitution, elimination, and preservation at the same time. The German word Aufhebung means at the same time elimination, preservation, and lifting something up. Digital fascism is a preservation of the general characteristics of fascism. It also is in certain ways different from previous forms of fascism. And it is fascism organised on a new level.

Part I of this book presents general analyses of fascism and related phenomena such as authoritarian capitalism, ideology, nationalism, anti-Semitism, and racism. Part II presents more concrete analyses of right-wing authoritarianism and fascism on the Internet that build on the insights from part I. The conclusion to the book (part III, Chapter 17) brings together the analyses of the book, the foundational analyses of part I and the concrete analyses of part II, at a meta-level, and works out and presents a concept of digital fascism.

Each chapter in this book focuses on a particular dimension of digital fascism or a critical theorist whose work helps us to illuminate how fascism and digital fascism works. Here are the main questions that each chapter asks:

• Chapter 2: how can Franz L. Neumann's critical theory help us to understand fascism?
• Chapter 3: how can Günther Anders's critical theory help us to understand fascism?
• Chapter 4: how can M. N. Roy's critical theory help us to understand fascism?
• Chapters 5 and 6: what are and should be the implications of the publication of Martin Heidegger's Black Notebooks for the reception of Heidegger in the study, theory, and philosophy of media, communication, and technology?
• Chapter 7: how did Internet users communicate about Hitler on his 127th birthday on Twitter?
• Chapter 8: how was Jeremy Corbyn during the Labour Leadership Election framed in discourses on Twitter in an ideological manner and how have such ideological discourses been challenged?
• Chapter 9: how did supporters of the far-right Freedom Party (FPÖ) express their support of the party's candidate Norbert Hofer in the 2016 Austrian presidential election on Facebook?
• Chapter 10: how does the Frankfurt School help us to understand Donald Trump's Twitter authoritarianism?
• Chapter 11: how does the critical theorist Henry Giroux assess Donald Trump?
• Chapter 12: why is it that right-wing authoritarian populism in recent times has become much more popular than left-wing movements? How do right-wing authoritarian movements communicate? Why is it that right-wing political communication strategies seem to garner and result in mass support?
• Chapter 13: how did Donald Trump incite a coup attempt (the storm on the Capitol on 6 January 2021)?
• Chapter 14: what parallels are there between Joachim C. Fest's Hitler biography and Michael Wolff's book Fire and Fury: Inside the Trump White House?
• Chapter 15: how did Boris Johnson communicate about Brexit on social media?
• Chapter 16: how can the logic of the media be decelerated (“slow media”) in order to advance debate and the public sphere in the age of digital authoritarianism, fake news, and filter bubbles?

In this book the readers encounter a number of theorists who will now be introduced:

Theodor W. Adorno, Franz L. Neumann, Erich Fromm, Herbert Marcuse, Wilhelm Reich, Leo Löwenthal, Moishe Postone, Günther Anders, M. N. Roy, Henry Giroux, and Martin Heidegger.

Theodor W. Adorno (1903–1969) was a German philosopher and sociologist who together with Max Horkheimer shaped the approach of Frankfurt School critical theory. Among Adorno's most well-known works are Dialectic of Enlightenment (written together with Horkheimer), The Authoritarian Personality, Minima Moralia: Reflections from Damaged Life, Introduction to the Sociology of Music, Hegel: Three Studies, The Jargon of Authenticity, Negative Dialectics, and Aesthetic Theory. Chapter 3 (Adorno and the Media in Digital Capitalism) analyses how Adorno's works can inform the critical analysis of digital capitalism.

Franz Leopold Neumann (1900–1954) was a political theorist associated with the Frankfurt School. He obtained a doctoral degree in legal studies at the University of Frankfurt with the dissertation A Legal-Philosophical Introduction to A Treatise on the Relationship between the State and Punishment (Neumann 1923). After that, he worked as assistant of Hugo Sinzheimer, who was a professor of legal studies at Frankfurt University. Neumann was a practising advocate who specialised in labour law. In 1927, Neumann together with Ernst Fraenkel started a lawyer's office in Berlin. They both worked for trade unions: Neumann specialised on legal cases for the construction workers’ union, and Fraenkel focused on support for the metal workers’ union. Neumann became the German Social Democratic Party's main legal advisor at a time when the Nazis and Hitler gained strength in Germany. When Hitler came to power in 1933, the legal office had to be closed. Neumann had to flee from Nazi Germany and went first to London, where he completed a second PhD, and then to the USA. His main book Behemoth: The Structure and Practice of National Socialism, 1933–1944 analyses the connection of capitalism and fascism.

Erich Fromm (1900–1980) was a Marxist-humanist philosopher, psychoanalyst, and sociologist. He coined the notion of the authoritarian character. He was a member of the Frankurt School in the 1930s. Fromm's approach combines Marx's theory and Freud's psychoanalysis. He is one of the main representatives of Marxist psychoanalysis and Marxist humanism. Among his most important books are Escape from Freedom, The Sane Society, Marx's Concept of Man, The Anatomy of Human Destructiveness, and the collected volume Socialist Humanism.

Herbert Marcuse (1898–1979) was together with Theodor W. Adorno and Max Horkheimer the major thinker in the first generation of the Frankfurt School. He was a philosopher and political theorist who contributed to the development of Marxist humanist philosophy and the critique of ideology. He was influenced by Hegel, Marx, and Freud. His major books are Reason and Revolution: Hegel and the Rise of Social Theory, Eros and Civilization: A Philosophical Inquiry into Freud, One-Dimensional Man: Studies in the Ideology of Advanced Industrial Society, An Essay on Liberation, and Counterrevolution and Revolt.

Wilhelm Reich (1897–1957) was a psychoanalysts, political economist, sociologist, and sexologist. Reich was interested in the analysis of sexuality in capitalism and the connection of fascism, capitalism, ideology, sexuality, and the human psyche. In his book The Mass Psychology of Fascism, Reich analyses how fascists, especially the Nazis, gained power. He saw the authoritarian family is the cell form of the fascist state and fascist society. Reich anticipated and influenced the notion of the authoritarian personality that was developed by Erich Fromm and Theodor W. Adorno.

Leo Löwenthal (1900–1993) was a philosopher, sociologist, and cultural theorist. He was associated with the Frankfurt School. He had to flee from Nazi Germany to the USA. After the Second World War, he became a professor of sociology at the University of California Berkeley. Among Löwenthal's books are Literature and the Image of Man; Literature, Popular Culture, and Society; Prophets of Deceit: A Study of the Techniques of the American Agitator (together with Norbert Guterman); Literature and Mass Culture; and False Prophets: Studies on Authoritarianism.

Moishe Postone (1942–2018) was a historian, political economist, and critical theorist. He was a professor of history at the University of Chicago. Postone contributed to the reinterpretation and reactualisation of Marx's theory. Postone gave special attention to Marx's concepts of value that he used for grounding a critical theory of time in capitalism and to Marx's notion of commodity fetishism that he used for the critical analysis of ideology, anti-Semitism, and fascism. His major work is Time, Labor and Social Domination: A Reinterpretation of Marx's Critical Theory.

Günther Anders (1902–1992) was a philosopher and critical theoris...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Half Title
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Contents
• List of Figures
• List of Tables
• Acknowledgements
• 1 Introduction
• Part I: Foundations
• Part II: Applications
• Part III: Conclusion
• Index